


Two People, Just Breathing

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-12-20
Updated: 2003-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:31:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1636574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These are the things Polly remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two People, Just Breathing

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Zara Hemla

 

 

These are the things Polly remembers: 

The smell of mud (damp and earthy) with the taste of blood (sharp and metallic). Grass trampled underfoot. Constant gnawing hunger, worse than any flesh and blood enemy because it was always there. The feeling of easing out of the dented armour after hours of being encased in it. Getting annoyed with every other person in the platoon for being there all the time and never allowing any privacy or solitude. 

The freedom. 

* 

It's not that being married to William is unrewarding, or even that she regrets her decision to leave the army and settle down. It's just that it isn't what she's used to - or that's what she keeps on telling herself while she cooks and bakes and tidies and cleans and grows older by the hour. William leaves the house minutes after sunrise and returns minutes before sundown (except in the winter when sundown happens too early for him to get hold of any good stories and then he can be out until after she's gone to bed), and she stays at home all day. He kisses her on the cheek before he leaves. A payment for her day's work. 

At night, she lies next to him and dreams of how her life was, how her life is, and how her life will be. She imagines fighting again, holding a sword in her calloused hand and closing her eyes just as the blade bites into giving flesh. 

* 

Killing never got any easier; it's true. She remembers the first time she felt completely responsible for the man felled by her blade. She vomited as he dropped to the ground, wronging him again in death by befouling the ground on which he lay. It seemed too quick; to traverse from living breathing existence to cold still death in less than a second. 

"You can never be half-alive, or half-dead," said Maladicta consolingly afterwards. "You're alive until you die, and then you're all dead. I should know," and Polly smiled a weak trembling smile that belied the blood covering her sword. She still didn't manage to sleep for a week or more. Every time she closed her eyes, she could see the man's face, eyes open wide and lips parted as if he was about to speak. 

* 

On the nights when William heaves himself on top of her, she bites her lip, closes her eyes, and thinks of windswept fields where they once lay. He's gentle, careful, his breath hot on her skin and his kisses light and loving, but there's a purpose behind his movements. He wants a son, and she wants anything but a child, another trap to keep her here. 

* 

Something to tell the grandchildren, he'd laughed, and pulled her down among the long grass. She'd loosened her uniform, slid it off, and spread it out on the ground for them to lie upon. 

She remembers: how many cliches were there? The sun was shining, birds were singing, they made love. He'd followed her from the end of her tour of duty and caught up to her a few days away from the inn, and she'd known. She'd known that this was time to settle down. She'd known that she couldn't be a soldier forever, because it turned out that after all she rather wanted the cosy home and the husband and the children. 

He'd tried to woo her, but he really hadn't needed to. She'd already decided it was time to stop fighting, and his pretty words were just a formality. He came back to the inn with her, and then she came back to the city with him, and then they got married. 

* 

William was quite a catch, really. Rich independently and by heritage, ambitious, fairly good-looking as aristocrats go, in love with her. What more could a girl ask for? 

He didn't try to hold her back either, not at the beginning. "You can work with Sacharissa," he'd said. "She can always use another pair of hands - and I know you won't want to be stuck at home all day. Not you." But Sacharissa hadn't liked her at all, and carrying boxes of paper and ink around was unfulfilling, to say the least. So she'd fabricated excuses not to turn up until William agreed there was no need for her to go back, they were getting on fine without her really, although it was such a shame, and Rissa did miss her dreadfully. 

These are the lies that oil her marriage: she doesn't need to work; she enjoys being at home; she wants children; she doesn't miss fighting; she likes being feminine. 

* 

She writes a hundred notes, that all begin with Dear William. Dear William, I still love you. Dear William, this isn't your fault. Dear William, please don't look for me. 

She throws them all away. It's not unheard of for a woman to leave her husband, but she doesn't want to be that woman - she wants everything to feel right, like she's read in books and seen in Sacharissa's plethora of magazines. The Perfect Marryage. How To Catche Hym & Keep Hym. Keep The Sparke Alive! She's read them all again and again, and it doesn't help with this itch down inside her, this feeling that nothing at all is right or can ever be right again. 

* 

Months have passed in this way, and more months will pass the same way, until one day she knows she will wake up and years of her life will be gone. She opens her mouth at breakfast to tell William that she needs a change, but no words come out. She is struck dumb, effectively muted by her own fear that he will hate her for not loving him like he loves her. 

He presses his lips to her cheek in a perfunctory kiss and rushes out of the door, sheets of paper flapping from his coat pockets and a pen stuck behind his ear, and she begins to clear the dishes away. One more day can't make that much difference. 

Except that one more day means she gets up to make breakfast and she knows that everything is different. That three months have passed without any sign of bleeding. That suddenly she has to grow up and accept her choices. That for better or worse, this is her life now. 

* 

These are the things that she misses: 

The restful feeling after a full night's sleep. Being able to leave the house whenever she feels like it. The comparative peace of running the inn. Her brother. Her friends, scattered from the army and living all over the Disc. 

But these are the things she could not live without: 

Her son. 

 


End file.
